Dark Matter - Blog Posts

AHHHH MORE DARK MATTER SKETCHES TO CELEBRATE THE NEWEST ADDITION TO THE SERIES !!! I hope to some day finish the batman and spiderman sketch to actually celebrate this but I got excited and rlly wanted to post loll ONCE AGAIN pls check out @mysterycyclone bc they are such a fire spider man writer and their peter characterization is peak 💯💯💯

AHHHH MORE DARK MATTER SKETCHES TO CELEBRATE THE NEWEST ADDITION TO THE SERIES !!! I hope to some day finish the batman and spiderman sketch to actually celebrate this but I got excited and rlly wanted to post loll ONCE AGAIN pls check out @mysterycyclone bc they are such a fire spider man writer and their peter characterization is peak 💯💯💯

bunch of doodles in spired by @mysterycyclone 's Dark Matter fic !! Please check out their writing ❤️❤️

a dark matter fanart I did a while ago :))) I did plan on cleaning it up and rendering it a bit more but never got around to it so imma just post it as it is lol :P

__

fic: Dark Matter by mysterycyclone

I'm not entirely sure how to use tumblr but here's some fanart of Dark Matter by mysterycyclone that I did a while ago :D it's Peter eating at the cafeteria in Gotham Prep :)))

Ignore the arms on the top left, besides that it's accurate. Glad I managed to fit some 02 in there after all! Bro is looking like a proper final boss 😎

On my Kirby grind thinking about how much dms/02 resembled Dedede/Ripple in both goals and appearance

Alright, getting somewhere

On my Kirby grind thinking about how much dms/02 resembled Dedede/Ripple in both goals and appearance

What if Gooey grew up to look like a dreamcatcher

On my Kirby grind thinking about how much dms/02 resembled Dedede/Ripple in both goals and appearance

On my Kirby grind thinking about how much dms/02 resembled Dedede/Ripple in both goals and appearance

Dark Matter has been cancelled and all is not okay

Just.... no

I’m so used to being part of big fandoms that I’m feeling really weird and not knowing what to do now that I’m in a fandom that is not that big.

I usually go to AO3 and my ships tags have at least 2k fics on them… Dark Matter doesn’t even have 250 fic in total…

Worst part is, I don’t know why that is? Dark Matter is the type of show that seems like one that would gather a pretty big fanbase?

THIS IS WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH DARK MATTER:

It’s an AWESOME show!

It has an interesting plot - 6 people wake up in a space station without any memories of who they are and then find out that they were all vicious criminals with a reputation allover the galaxy. This memory loss does however not extend to knowledge that was so ingrained in them that they could not forget because it comes as instinct, for example, one character was great at hand to hand combat and had great leadership skills, that was not lost in that memory loss, another was great with technology, that was not lost in the memory loss, etc.  They have to decide if they want to go back to who they were or take the memory loss as an opportunity to become different people.

It has amazing characters - All characters are incredibly complex and develop all throughout the show. The characters were named in the order they woke up and realized they had lost their memory, so, there is One, a boring white guy that I don’t care for (I know that’s not the best way to start this but he stops being a problem). There’s Two, (the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen), she takes on the role as the leader, she is tough but she has a good heart and probably one of the most complex characters on the show, she is also the love of my life and can kick my butt (and everyone elses) as she pleases without much of a struggle! Three, a supposed jackass that you’ll grow to love, he is pretty funny too. Four, a quiet guy that is a master at sword fighting and that you know you shouldn’t mess with him. Five or “the kid”, she is basically a tech genius and everyone underestimates her until they learn better but also everyone loves her. Six, a big guy with a heart of gold and his relationship with Five will melt your heart. If you watch Supergirl, we call J’onn Space Dad? Six is also a Space Dad. TOO CUTE, I love him. And last but DEFINITELY not least, The Android, she is a robot but as the story progresses you see that there is more to her than that, she’s special and also the love of my life! Two kicks ass, but The Android is basically undefeatable unless someone has a taser lol

The female characters are kickass as fuck! Like, I’m not kidding… There are 3 main female characters, Two, Five and The Android and all of them have saved everyone’s asses multiple times (if not most of the times if I’m being honest) there is no damsel in distress trope on this show, like ever! This show is feminist through and through and I love it!

This is Two being kickass: (the fight scenes are AMAZING on this show)

This is Five being a smartass:

This is the Android being a cutiepie: 

If you’re gay, you have most likely watched Lost Girl and so you know that the Android is played by Zoie Palmer (Dr. Lauren Lewis/half of Doccubus) and she KILLS IT! 

If this is not enough reason to watch the show, maybe it will convince you the fact that Two is bi/pan in canon AND, without spoiling anything, Zoie does play a gay character as well later on.

AND if you still are not convinced, I know quite a few of you are Ruby Rose fans… guess what? She guest stars on Dark Matter!

I don’t know how this post about me complaining that Dark Matter needs more fans so I can read more fics turned into a “WATCH DARK MATTER” post but here we are…

If you are still not convinced and need more convincing, please, you can message me about it.

Dark Matter and Killjoys - making my life whole again.

Peter Parker is so adoptable. “Oh you mean adaptable-“ NO.

First up we got the classic irondad/spiderson dynamic. ICONIC. Can have you punching wholes in the walls with the amount of FEELS and FLUFF and, of course, ANGST. 10/10, great way to get started. BUT. We’ve barely even scratched the surface.

My other personal favourite: Matt Murdock AKA Daredevil adopts Peter. Bonus points if it’s after No Way Home, the emotional hurt/comfort potential is IMMENSE. I just. I love that shit. I eat it up every time. GIMME!!!

Next up, one I did not think would work, but it ABSOLUTELY DOES: Bucky Barnes adopts Peter. Currently reading a fic called Anatomy In Reverse by pansley on ao3, and lemme tell ya im OBSESSED. I did not think there was potential there, BUT BOY WAS I WRONG. (Lovely fic, would 100% recommend it btw)

Oh and did you think Peters adoptableness only reached until the confinements of the MCU? THINK AGAIN. Cuz the Batfam is NOT ABOVE ADDING SPIDERS TO THE BATS AND BIRDS!! You think Batman has an adoption problem, you’ve clearly never seen the amount of fics of Nightwing adopting Peter. (I guess it runs in the family. Also, Dark Matter anyone??)

And these are just the ones I’ve come across! It’s like if you feel like writing parent-child dynamics in the mcu - or even outside of it, jesus! - you just get yourself a ready-to-adopt Peter Parker, maybe kill of some more of his parental figures i guess, and boom! You got yourself an adoptee!

some dark matter & a bunch of marx’s

from aggie

i’m alive today i guess

have a dark matter swordsman

Back to the Forest

Be Yourself for Me

I walked around. The place was familiar. It was hard to make out anything, but I knew where I were. I was at the backside of the house.

Why do I look like this? Could it be that... this is ITs form? As soon as that thought struck me another of those gleaming Humans came, and behind it many more. I was scared.

They don't know who I am... or what. They must be out to either kill me or scare me away. Without making much of a ruckus I fled into the forest. I knew I would be safe from humans there, at least for the night. I hope this spook is over by dawn.

Picture Dark Territory by DarkSilverflame

Music Be Yourself for Me by Dark Matter

© The Zero 零 Squad, 2013-2016

Such a great art of kirby characters from memory

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s flight harness is transferred from the mock-up structure to the spacecraft flight structure.

Your Body is Wired Like a NASA Space Telescope. Sort Of.

If our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope were alive, its nervous system would be the intricate wiring, or “harness,” that helps different parts of the observatory communicate with one another. Just like the human body sends information through nerves to function, Roman will send commands through this special harness to help achieve its mission: answering longstanding questions about dark energy, dark matter, and exoplanets, among other mind-bending cosmic queries. 

Roman’s harness weighs around 1,000 pounds and is made of about 32,000 wires and 900 connectors. If those parts were laid out end-to-end, they would be 45 miles long from start to finish. Coincidentally, the human body’s nerves would span the same distance if lined up. That’s far enough to reach nearly three-fourths of the way to space, twice as far as a marathon, or eight times taller than Mount Everest! 

An aerial view of the harness technicians working to secure Roman’s harness to the spacecraft flight structure.

Over a span of two years, 11 technicians spent time at the workbench and perched on ladders, cutting wire to length, carefully cleaning each component, and repeatedly connecting everything together.  

Space is usually freezing cold, but spacecraft that are in direct sunlight can get incredibly hot. Roman’s harness went through the Space Environment Simulator – a massive thermal vacuum chamber – to expose the components to the temperatures they’ll experience in space. Technicians “baked” vapors out of the harness to make sure they won’t cause problems later in orbit.  

Technicians work to secure Roman’s harness to the interior of the spacecraft flight structure. They are standing in the portion of the spacecraft bus where the propellant tanks will be mounted.  

The next step is for engineers to weave the harness through the flight structure in Goddard’s big clean room, a space almost perfectly free of dust and other particles. This process will be ongoing until most of the spacecraft components are assembled. The Roman Space Telescope is set to launch by May 2027. 

Learn more about the exciting science this mission will investigate on X and Facebook. 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space! 

Caution: Universe Work Ahead 🚧

We only have one universe. That’s usually plenty – it’s pretty big after all! But there are some things scientists can’t do with our real universe that they can do if they build new ones using computers.

The universes they create aren’t real, but they’re important tools to help us understand the cosmos. Two teams of scientists recently created a couple of these simulations to help us learn how our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope sets out to unveil the universe’s distant past and give us a glimpse of possible futures.

Caution: you are now entering a cosmic construction zone (no hard hat required)!

This simulated Roman deep field image, containing hundreds of thousands of galaxies, represents just 1.3 percent of the synthetic survey, which is itself just one percent of Roman's planned survey. The full simulation is available here. The galaxies are color coded – redder ones are farther away, and whiter ones are nearer. The simulation showcases Roman’s power to conduct large, deep surveys and study the universe statistically in ways that aren’t possible with current telescopes.

One Roman simulation is helping scientists plan how to study cosmic evolution by teaming up with other telescopes, like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. It’s based on galaxy and dark matter models combined with real data from other telescopes. It envisions a big patch of the sky Roman will survey when it launches by 2027. Scientists are exploring the simulation to make observation plans so Roman will help us learn as much as possible. It’s a sneak peek at what we could figure out about how and why our universe has changed dramatically across cosmic epochs.

This video begins by showing the most distant galaxies in the simulated deep field image in red. As it zooms out, layers of nearer (yellow and white) galaxies are added to the frame. By studying different cosmic epochs, Roman will be able to trace the universe's expansion history, study how galaxies developed over time, and much more.

As part of the real future survey, Roman will study the structure and evolution of the universe, map dark matter – an invisible substance detectable only by seeing its gravitational effects on visible matter – and discern between the leading theories that attempt to explain why the expansion of the universe is speeding up. It will do it by traveling back in time…well, sort of.

Seeing into the past

Looking way out into space is kind of like using a time machine. That’s because the light emitted by distant galaxies takes longer to reach us than light from ones that are nearby. When we look at farther galaxies, we see the universe as it was when their light was emitted. That can help us see billions of years into the past. Comparing what the universe was like at different ages will help astronomers piece together the way it has transformed over time.

This animation shows the type of science that astronomers will be able to do with future Roman deep field observations. The gravity of intervening galaxy clusters and dark matter can lens the light from farther objects, warping their appearance as shown in the animation. By studying the distorted light, astronomers can study elusive dark matter, which can only be measured indirectly through its gravitational effects on visible matter. As a bonus, this lensing also makes it easier to see the most distant galaxies whose light they magnify.

The simulation demonstrates how Roman will see even farther back in time thanks to natural magnifying glasses in space. Huge clusters of galaxies are so massive that they warp the fabric of space-time, kind of like how a bowling ball creates a well when placed on a trampoline. When light from more distant galaxies passes close to a galaxy cluster, it follows the curved space-time and bends around the cluster. That lenses the light, producing brighter, distorted images of the farther galaxies.

Roman will be sensitive enough to use this phenomenon to see how even small masses, like clumps of dark matter, warp the appearance of distant galaxies. That will help narrow down the candidates for what dark matter could be made of.

In this simulated view of the deep cosmos, each dot represents a galaxy. The three small squares show Hubble's field of view, and each reveals a different region of the synthetic universe. Roman will be able to quickly survey an area as large as the whole zoomed-out image, which will give us a glimpse of the universe’s largest structures.

Constructing the cosmos over billions of years

A separate simulation shows what Roman might expect to see across more than 10 billion years of cosmic history. It’s based on a galaxy formation model that represents our current understanding of how the universe works. That means that Roman can put that model to the test when it delivers real observations, since astronomers can compare what they expected to see with what’s really out there.

In this side view of the simulated universe, each dot represents a galaxy whose size and brightness corresponds to its mass. Slices from different epochs illustrate how Roman will be able to view the universe across cosmic history. Astronomers will use such observations to piece together how cosmic evolution led to the web-like structure we see today.

This simulation also shows how Roman will help us learn how extremely large structures in the cosmos were constructed over time. For hundreds of millions of years after the universe was born, it was filled with a sea of charged particles that was almost completely uniform. Today, billions of years later, there are galaxies and galaxy clusters glowing in clumps along invisible threads of dark matter that extend hundreds of millions of light-years. Vast “cosmic voids” are found in between all the shining strands.

Astronomers have connected some of the dots between the universe’s early days and today, but it’s been difficult to see the big picture. Roman’s broad view of space will help us quickly see the universe’s web-like structure for the first time. That’s something that would take Hubble or Webb decades to do! Scientists will also use Roman to view different slices of the universe and piece together all the snapshots in time. We’re looking forward to learning how the cosmos grew and developed to its present state and finding clues about its ultimate fate.

This image, containing millions of simulated galaxies strewn across space and time, shows the areas Hubble (white) and Roman (yellow) can capture in a single snapshot. It would take Hubble about 85 years to map the entire region shown in the image at the same depth, but Roman could do it in just 63 days. Roman’s larger view and fast survey speeds will unveil the evolving universe in ways that have never been possible before.

Roman will explore the cosmos as no telescope ever has before, combining a panoramic view of the universe with a vantage point in space. Each picture it sends back will let us see areas that are at least a hundred times larger than our Hubble or James Webb space telescopes can see at one time. Astronomers will study them to learn more about how galaxies were constructed, dark matter, and much more.

The simulations are much more than just pretty pictures – they’re important stepping stones that forecast what we can expect to see with Roman. We’ve never had a view like Roman’s before, so having a preview helps make sure we can make the most of this incredible mission when it launches.

Learn more about the exciting science this mission will investigate on Twitter and Facebook.

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Our Roman Space Telescope’s Dish is Complete!

NASA engineers recently completed tests of the high-gain antenna for our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. This observatory has some truly stellar plans once it launches by May 2027. Roman will help unravel the secrets of dark energy and dark matter – two invisible components that helped shape our universe and may determine its ultimate fate. The mission will also search for and image planets outside our solar system and explore all kinds of other cosmic topics.

However, it wouldn’t be able to send any of the data it will gather back to Earth without its antenna. Pictured above in a test chamber, this dish will provide the primary communication link between the Roman spacecraft and the ground. It will downlink the highest data volume of any NASA astrophysics mission so far.

The antenna reflector is made of a carbon composite material that weighs very little but will still withstand wide temperature fluctuations. It’s very hot and cold in space – Roman will experience a temperature range of minus 26 to 284 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 32 to 140 degrees Celsius)!

The dish spans 5.6 feet (1.7 meters) in diameter, standing about as tall as a refrigerator, yet only weighs 24 pounds (10.9 kilograms) – about as much as a dachshund. Its large size will help Roman send radio signals across a million miles of intervening space to Earth.

At one frequency, the dual-band antenna will receive commands and send back information about the spacecraft’s health and location. It will use another frequency to transmit a flood of data at up to 500 megabits per second to ground stations on Earth. The dish is designed to point extremely accurately at Earth, all while both Earth and the spacecraft are moving through space.

Engineers tested the antenna to make sure it will withstand the spacecraft’s launch and operate as expected in the extreme environment of space. The team also measured the antenna’s performance in a radio-frequency anechoic test chamber. Every surface in the test chamber is covered in pyramidal foam pieces that minimize interfering reflections during testing. Next, the team will attach the antenna to the articulating boom assembly, and then electrically integrate it with Roman’s Radio Frequency Communications System.

Learn more about the exciting science this mission will investigate on Twitter and Facebook.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

Our Galaxy is Caught Up in a Giant Cosmic Cobweb! 🕸️

If we could zoom waaaay out, we would see that galaxies and galaxy clusters make up large, fuzzy threads, like the strands of a giant cobweb. But we'll work our way out to that. First let's start at home and look at our planet's different cosmic communities.

Our home star system

Earth is one of eight planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune — that orbit the Sun. But our solar system is more than just planets; it also has a lot of smaller objects.

An asteroid belt circles the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Beyond Neptune is a doughnut-shaped region of icy objects called the Kuiper Belt. This is where dwarf planets like Pluto and Makemake are found and is likely the source of short-period comets (like Haley’s comet), which orbit the Sun in less than 200 years.

Scientists think that even farther out lies the Oort Cloud, also a likely source of comets. This most distant region of our solar system is a giant spherical shell storing additional icy space debris the size of mountains, or larger! The outer edge of the Oort Cloud extends to about 1.5 light-years from the Sun — that’s the distance light travels in a year and a half (over 9 trillion miles).

Sometimes asteroids or comets get ejected from these regions and end up sharing an orbit with planets like Jupiter or even crossing Earth’s orbit. There are even interstellar objects that have entered the inner solar system from even farther than the Oort Cloud, perhaps coming all the way from another star!

Our home galaxy

Let's zoom out to look at the whole Milky Way galaxy, which contains more than 100 billion stars. Many are found in the galaxy’s disk — the pancake-shaped part of a spiral galaxy where the spiral arms lie. The brightest and most massive stars are found in the spiral arms, close to their birth places. Dimmer, less massive stars can be found sprinkled throughout the disk. Also found throughout the spiral arms are dense clouds of gas and dust called nebulae. The Sun lies in a small spiral arm called the Orion Spur.

The Milky Way’s disk is embedded in a spherical “halo” about 120,000 light-years across. The halo is dotted with globular clusters of old stars and filled with dark matter. Dark matter doesn’t emit enough light for us to directly detect it, but we know it’s there because without its mass our galaxy doesn’t have enough gravity to hold together!

Our galaxy also has several orbiting companion galaxies ranging from about 25,000 to 1.4 million light-years away. The best known of these are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, which are visible to the unaided eye from Earth’s Southern Hemisphere.

Our galactic neighborhood

The Milky Way and Andromeda, our nearest neighboring spiral galaxy, are just two members of a small group of galaxies called the Local Group. They and the other members of the group, 50 to 80 smaller galaxies, spread across about 10 million light-years.

The Local Group lies at the outskirts of an even larger structure. It is just one of at least 100 groups and clusters of galaxies that make up the Virgo Supercluster. This cluster of clusters spans about 110 million light-years!

Galaxies aren’t the only thing found in a galaxy cluster, though. We also find hot gas, as shown above in the bright X-ray light (in pink) that surrounds the galaxies (in optical light) of cluster Abell 1413, which is a picturesque member of a different supercluster. Plus, there is dark matter throughout the cluster that is only detectable through its gravitational interactions with other objects.

The Cosmic Web

The Virgo Supercluster is just one of many, many other groups of galaxies. But the universe’s structure is more than just galaxies, clusters, and the stuff contained within them.

For more than two decades, astronomers have been mapping out the locations of galaxies, revealing a filamentary, web-like structure. This large-scale backbone of the cosmos consists of dark matter laced with gas. Galaxies and clusters form along this structure, and there are large voids in between.

The scientific visualizations of this “cosmic web” look a little like a spider web, but that would be one colossal spider! <shudder>

And there you have the different communities that define Earth’s place in the universe. Our tiny planet is a small speck on a crumb of that giant cosmic web!

Want to learn even more about the structures in the universe? Check out our Cosmic Distance Scale!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space.

Roman’s Five-Year Forecast: A Downpour of Data!

Our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope recently passed a major review of the ground system, which will make data from the spacecraft available to scientists and the public.

Since the telescope has a gigantic field of view, it will be able to send us tons of data really quickly — about 500 times faster than our Hubble Space Telescope! That means Roman will send back a flood of new information about the cosmos.

Let’s put it into perspective — if we printed out all of Roman’s data as text, the paper would have to hurtle out of the printer at 40,000 miles per hour (64,000 kilometers per hour) to keep up! At that rate, the stack of papers would tower 330 miles (530 kilometers) high after a single day. By the end of Roman’s five-year primary mission, the stack would extend even farther than the Moon! With all this data, Roman will bring all kinds of cosmic treasures to light, from dark matter and dark energy to distant planets and more!

Learn more about the Roman Space Telescope.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

❤️🧡💛 Color the Cosmos 💚💙💜

📣 Attention, space explorers! Our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope presents: two new coloring pages! Unleash your creativity to bring these celestial scenes to life.

Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer, smiles out at us from our first coloring page. She’s considered the mother of our Hubble Space Telescope because she helped everyone understand why it was important to have observatories in space – not just on the ground. If it weren’t for her, Hubble may have never become a reality.

The Roman Space Telescope is named after her to honor the legacy she left behind when she died in 2018. Thanks to Nancy Grace Roman, we’ve taken countless pictures of space from orbiting telescopes and learned so much more about the universe than we could have possibly known otherwise!

The second coloring page illustrates some of the exciting science topics the Roman Space Telescope will explore. Set to launch in the mid-2020s, the mission will view the universe in infrared light, which is like using heat vision. We’ll be able to peer through clouds of dust and see things that are much farther away.

We anticipate all kinds of discoveries from the edge of our solar system to the farthest reaches of space. This coloring page highlights a few of the things the Roman Space Telescope will help us learn more about. The mission will find thousands of planets beyond our solar system and hundreds of millions of galaxies. It will also help us unravel the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, represented by the gray web-like pattern in the background. With so much exciting new data, who knows what else we may learn?

Download the coloring pages here!

Learn more about the Roman Space Telescope at: https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Scary Space: New Halloween Poster Treats from NASA

Halloween is just around the corner. Need some chilling décor? We’ve got you – and your walls – covered with three new Galaxy of Horrors posters that showcase some of the most terrifying topics in the universe.

Gamma Ray Ghouls

In the depths of the universe, the cores of two collapsed stars violently merge to release a burst of the deadliest and most powerful form of light, known as gamma rays. These beams of doom are unleashed upon their unfortunate surroundings, shining a billion trillion times brighter than the Sun for up to 30 terrifying seconds. No spaceship will shield you from their blinding destruction!

Galactic Graveyard

The chillingly haunted galaxy called MACS 2129-1 mysteriously stopped making stars only a few billion years after the Big Bang. It became a cosmic cemetery, illuminated by the red glow of decaying stars. Dare to enter and you might encounter the frightening corpses of exoplanets or the final death throes of once-mighty stars.

Dark Matter

Something strange and mysterious creeps throughout the cosmos. Scientists call it dark matter. It is scattered in an intricate web that forms the skeleton of our universe. Dark matter is invisible, only revealing its presence by pushing and pulling on objects we can see. NASA’s Roman Space Telescope will investigate its secrets. What will it find?

Download the full set in English and Spanish here.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

From Discovering the Secrets of the Universe to In-Space Servicing, We’ve Got The Tools for the Job

If you need to fix something on Earth, you could go to a store, buy the tools you need, and get started. In space, it’s not that easy.

Aside from the obvious challenges associated with space (like it being cold and there being no gravity), developing the right tools requires a great deal of creativity because every task is different, especially when the tools need to be designed from scratch. From the time an engineer dreams up the right tools to the time they are used in space, it can be quite a process.

On Nov. 15, astronauts Luca Parmitano and Drew Morgan began a series of spacewalks to repair an instrument called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-2) on the exterior of the International Space Station. The first of four spacewalk focused on using specialized tools to remove shields and covers, to gain access to the heart of AMS to perform the repairs, and install a new cooling system.

The debris shield that covered Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer floats away toward Earth as astronaut Drew Morgan successfully releases it.

Once repaired, AMS will continue to help us understand more about the formation of the universe and search for evidence of dark matter and antimatter.

These spacewalks, or extravehicular activities (EVAs), are the most complex of their kind since the servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope. AMS is particularly challenging to repair not only because of the instrument’s complexity and sensitivity, but also because it was never designed to be fixed. Because of this design, it does not have the kinds of interfaces that make spacewalks easier, or the ability to be operated on with traditional multi-purpose tools. These operations are so complex, their design and planning has taken four years. Let’s take a look at how we got ready to repair AMS.

Thinking Outside of the (Tool) Box

When designing the tools, our engineers need to keep in mind various complications that would not come into play when fixing something on Earth. For example, if you put a screw down while you’re on Earth, gravity will keep it there — in space, you have to consistently make sure each part is secure or it will float away. You also have to add a pressurized space suit with limited dexterity to the equation, which further complicates the tool design.

In addition to regular space complications, the AMS instrument itself presents many challenges — with over 300,000 data channels, it was considered too complex to service and therefore was not designed to one day be repaired or updated if needed. Additionally, astronauts have never before cut and reconnected micro-fluid lines (4 millimeters wide, less than the width of the average pencil) during a spacewalk, which is necessary to repair AMS, so our engineers had to develop the tools for this big first. 

With all of this necessary out-of-the-box thinking, who better to go to for help than the teams that worked on the most well-known repair missions — the Hubble servicing missions and the space station tool teams? Building on the legacy of these missions, some of our same engineers that developed tools for the Hubble servicing missions and space station maintenance got to work designing the necessary tools for the AMS repair, some reworked from Hubble, and some from scratch. In total, the teams from Goddard Space Flight Center’s Satellite Servicing Projects Division, Johnson Space Center, and AMS Project Office developed 21 tools for the mission.

Designing and Building

Like many great inventions, it all starts with a sketch. Engineers figure out what steps need to be taken to accomplish the task, and imagine the necessary tools to get the job done.

From there, engineers develop a computer-aided design (CAD) model, and get to building a prototype. Tools will then undergo multiple iterations and testing with the AMS repair team and astronauts to get the design just right, until eventually, they are finalized, ready to undergo vibration and thermal vacuum testing to make sure they can withstand the harsh conditions of launch and use in the space environment. 

Hex Head Capture Tool Progression:

Hex Head Capture Tool Used in Space: 

Practice Makes Perfect

One of the reasons the AMS spacewalks have been four years in the making is because the complexity of the repairs required the astronauts to take extra time to practice. Over many months, astronauts tasked with performing the spacewalks practiced the AMS repair procedures in numerous ways to make sure they were ready for action. They practiced in:  

Virtual reality simulations:

The Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory:

The Active Response Gravity Offload System (ARGOS):

Astronauts use this testing to develop and practice procedures in space-like conditions, but also to figure out what works and doesn’t work, and what changes need to be made. A great example is a part of the repair that involves cutting and reconnecting fluid lines. When astronauts practiced cutting the fluid lines during testing here on Earth, they found it was difficult to identify which was the right one to cut based on sight alone. 

The tubes on the AMS essentially look the same.

After discussing the concern with the team monitoring the EVAs, the engineers once again got to work to fix the problem.

And thus, the Tube Cutting Guide tool was born! Necessity is the mother of invention and the team could not have anticipated the astronauts would need such a tool until they actually began practicing. The Tube Cutting Guide provides alignment guides, fiducials and visual access to enable astronauts to differentiate between the tubes. After each of eight tubes is cut, a newly designed protective numbered cap is installed to cover the sharp tubing.

Off to Space

With the tools and repair procedures tested and ready to go, they launched to the International Space Station earlier this year. Now they’re in the middle of the main event -- Luca and Drew completed the first spacewalk last Friday, taking things apart to access the interior of the AMS instrument. Currently, there are three other spacewalks scheduled over the course of a month. The next spacewalk will happen on Nov. 22 and will put the Tube Cutting Guide to use when astronauts reconnect the tubes to a new cooling system.

With the ingenuity of our tool designers and engineers, and our astronauts' vigorous practice, AMS will be in good hands.

Check out the full video for the first spacewalk. Below you can check out each of the tools above in action in space!

Debris Shield Worksite: 2:29:16 – Debris Shield Handling Aid 2:35:25 – Hex Head Capture Tool (first) 2:53:31 – #10 Allen Bit 2:54:59 – Capture Cages 3:16:35 – #10 Allen Bit (diagonal side) 3:20:58 – Socket Head Capture Tool 3:33:35 – Hex Head Capture Tool (last) 3:39:35 – Fastener Capture Block 3:40:55 – Debris Shield removal 3:46:46 – Debris Shield jettison

Handrail Installations: 4:00:53 – Diagonal Beam Handrail Install 4:26:09 – Nadir Vacuum Case Handrail Install 4:33:50 – Zenith Vacuum Case Handrail InstallVertical Support Beam (VSB)

Vertical Support Beam (VSB) Worksite: 5:04:21 – Zip Tie Cutter 5:15:27 – VSB Cover Handling Aid 5:18:05 – #10 Allen Bit 5:24:34 – Socket Head Capture Tool 5:41:54 – VSB Cover breaking 5:45:22 – VSB Cover jettison 5:58:20 – Top Spacer Tool & M4 Allen Bit 6:08:25 – Top Spacer removal 7:42:05 - Astronaut shoutout to the tools team

What is the most fascinating thing about black hole research for you, personally?

How Gravity Warps Light

Gravity is obviously pretty important. It holds your feet down to Earth so you don’t fly away into space, and (equally important) it keeps your ice cream from floating right out of your cone! We’ve learned a lot about gravity over the past few hundred years, but one of the strangest things we’ve discovered is that most of the gravity in the universe comes from an invisible source called “dark matter.” While our telescopes can’t directly see dark matter, they can help us figure out more about it thanks to a phenomenon called gravitational lensing.

The Gravity of the Situation

Anything that has mass is called matter, and all matter has gravity. Gravity pulls on everything that has mass and warps space-time, the underlying fabric of the universe. Things like llamas and doughnuts and even paper clips all warp space-time, but only a tiny bit since they aren’t very massive.

But huge clusters of galaxies are so massive that their gravity produces some pretty bizarre effects. Light always travels in a straight line, but sometimes its path is bent. When light passes close to a massive object, space-time is so warped that it curves the path the light must follow. Light that would normally be blocked by the galaxy cluster is bent around it, producing intensified — and sometimes multiple — images of the source. This process, called gravitational lensing, turns galaxy clusters into gigantic, intergalactic magnifying glasses that give us a glimpse of cosmic objects that would normally be too distant and faint for even our biggest telescopes to see.

Hubble “Sees” Dark Matter

Let’s recap — matter warps space-time. The more matter, the stronger the warp and the bigger its gravitational lensing effects. In fact, by studying “lensed” objects, we can map out the quantity and location of the unseen matter causing the distortion!

Thanks to gravitational lensing, scientists have measured the total mass of many galaxy clusters, which revealed that all the matter they can see isn’t enough to create the warping effects they observe. There’s more gravitational pull than there is visible stuff to do the pulling — a lot more! Scientists think dark matter accounts for this difference. It’s invisible to our eyes and telescopes, but it can’t hide its gravity!

The mismatch between what we see and what we know must be there may seem strange, but it’s not hard to imagine. You know that people can’t float in mid-air, so what if you saw a person appearing to do just that? You would know right away that there must be wires holding him up, even if you couldn’t see them.

Our Hubble Space Telescope observations are helping unravel the dark matter mystery. By studying gravitationally lensed galaxy clusters with Hubble, astronomers have figured out how much of the matter in the universe is “normal” and how much is “dark.” Even though normal matter makes up everything from pickles to planets, there’s about five times more dark matter in the universe than all the normal matter combined!

WFIRST Will Escalate the Search

One of our next major space telescopes, the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), will take these gravitational lensing observations to the next level. WFIRST will be sensitive enough to use weak gravitational lensing to see how clumps of dark matter warp the appearance of distant galaxies. By observing lensing effects on this small scale, scientists will be able to fill in more of the gaps in our understanding of dark matter.

WFIRST will observe a sky area 100 times larger than Hubble does, but with the same awesome image quality. WFIRST will collect so much data in its first year that it will allow scientists to conduct in-depth studies that would have taken hundreds of years with previous telescopes.

WFIRST’s weak gravitational lensing observations will allow us to peer even further back in time than Hubble is capable of seeing. Scientists believe that the universe’s underlying dark matter structure played a major role in the formation and evolution of galaxies by attracting normal matter. Seeing the universe in its early stages will help scientists unravel how it has evolved over time and possibly provide clues to how it may continue to evolve. We don’t know what the future will hold, but WFIRST will help us find out.

This science is pretty mind-bending, even for scientists. Learn more as our current and future telescopes plan to help unlock these mysteries of the universe...

Hubble: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/main/index.html WFIRST: https://wfirst.gsfc.nasa.gov/

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Dark Matter 101: Looking for the missing mass

Here’s the deal — here at NASA we share all kinds of amazing images of planets, stars, galaxies, astronauts, other humans, and such, but those photos can only capture part of what’s out there. Every image only shows ordinary matter (scientists sometimes call it baryonic matter), which is stuff made from protons, neutrons and electrons. The problem astronomers have is that most of the matter in the universe is not ordinary matter – it’s a mysterious substance called dark matter.  

What is dark matter? We don’t really know. That’s not to say we don’t know anything about it – we can see its effects on ordinary matter. We’ve been getting clues about what it is and what it is not for decades. However, it’s hard to pinpoint its exact nature when it doesn’t emit light our telescopes can see. 

Misbehaving galaxies

The first hint that we might be missing something came in the 1930s when astronomers noticed that the visible matter in some clusters of galaxies wasn’t enough to hold the cluster together. The galaxies were moving so fast that they should have gone zinging out of the cluster before too long (astronomically speaking), leaving no cluster behind.

Simulation credit: ESO/L. Calçada

It turns out, there’s a similar problem with individual galaxies. In the 1960s and 70s, astronomers mapped out how fast the stars in a galaxy were moving relative to its center. The outer parts of every single spiral galaxy the scientists looked at were traveling so fast that they should have been flying apart.

Something was missing – a lot of it! In order to explain how galaxies moved in clusters and stars moved in individual galaxies, they needed more matter than scientists could see. And not just a little more matter. A lot . . . a lot, a lot. Astronomers call this missing mass “dark matter” — “dark” because we don’t know what it is. There would need to be five times as much dark matter as ordinary matter to solve the problem.  

Holding things together

Dark matter keeps galaxies and galaxy clusters from coming apart at the seams, which means dark matter experiences gravity the same way we do.

In addition to holding things together, it distorts space like any other mass. Sometimes we see distant galaxies whose light has been bent around massive objects on its way to us. This makes the galaxies appear stretched out or contorted. These distortions provide another measurement of dark matter.

Undiscovered particles?

There have been a number of theories over the past several decades about what dark matter could be; for example, could dark matter be black holes and neutron stars – dead stars that aren’t shining anymore? However, most of the theories have been disproven. Currently, a leading class of candidates involves an as-yet-undiscovered type of elementary particle called WIMPs, or Weakly Interacting Massive Particles.

Theorists have envisioned a range of WIMP types and what happens when they collide with each other. Two possibilities are that the WIMPS could mutually annihilate, or they could produce an intermediate, quickly decaying particle. In both cases, the collision would end with the production of gamma rays — the most energetic form of light — within the detection range of our Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.

Tantalizing evidence close to home

A few years ago, researchers took a look at Fermi data from near the center of our galaxy and subtracted out the gamma rays produced by known sources. There was a left-over gamma-ray signal, which could be consistent with some forms of dark matter.

While it was an exciting finding, the case is not yet closed because lots of things at the center of the galaxy make gamma rays. It’s going to take multiple sightings using other experiments and looking at other astronomical objects to know for sure if this excess is from dark matter.

In the meantime, Fermi will continue the search, as it has over its 10 years in space. Learn more about Fermi and how we’ve been celebrating its first decade in space.

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Things That Go Bump in the Gamma Rays

Some people watch scary movies because they like being startled. A bad guy jumps out from around a corner! A monster emerges from the shadows! Scientists experience surprises all the time, but they’re usually more excited than scared. Sometimes theories foreshadow new findings — like when there’s a dramatic swell in the movie soundtrack — but often, discoveries are truly unexpected. 

Scientists working with the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope have been jumping to study mysterious bumps in the gamma rays for a decade now. Gamma rays are the highest-energy form of light. Invisible to human eyes, they’re created by some of the most powerful and unusual events and objects in the universe. In celebration of Halloween, here are a few creepy gamma-ray findings from Fermi’s catalog.

Stellar Graveyards

If you were to walk through a cemetery at night, you’d expect to trip over headstones or grave markers. Maybe you’d worry about running into a ghost. If you could explore the stellar gravesite created when a star explodes as a supernova, you’d find a cloud of debris expanding into interstellar space. Some of the chemical elements in that debris, like gold and platinum, go on to create new stars and planets! Fermi found that supernova remnants IC 443 and W44 also accelerate mysterious cosmic rays, high-energy particles moving at nearly the speed of light. As the shockwave of the supernova expands, particles escape its magnetic field and interact with non-cosmic-ray particles to produce gamma rays. 

Ghost Particles

But the sources of cosmic rays aren’t the only particle mysteries Fermi studies. Just this July, Fermi teamed up with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica to discover the first source of neutrinos outside our galactic neighborhood. Neutrinos are particles that weigh almost nothing and rarely interact with anything. Around a trillion of them pass through you every second, ghost-like, without you noticing and then continue on their way. (But don’t worry, like a friendly ghost, they don’t harm you!) Fermi traced the neutrino IceCube detected back to a supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy. By the time it reached Earth, it had traveled for 3.7 billion years at almost the speed of light!

Black Widow Pulsars

Black widows and redbacks are species of spiders with a reputation for devouring their partners. Astronomers have discovered two types of star systems that behave in a similar way. Sometimes when a star explodes as a supernova, it collapses back into a rapidly spinning, incredibly dense star called a pulsar. If there’s a lighter star nearby, it can get stuck in a close orbit with the pulsar, which blasts it with gamma rays, magnetic fields and intense winds of energetic particles. All these combine to blow clouds of material off the low-mass star. Eventually, the pulsar can eat away at its companion entirely.

Dark Matter

What’s scarier than a good unsolved mystery? Dark matter is a little-understood substance that makes up most of the matter in the universe. The stuff that we can see — stars, people, haunted houses, candy — is made up of normal matter. But our surveys of the cosmos tell us there’s not enough normal matter to keep things working the way they do. There must be another type of matter out there holding everything together. One of Fermi’s jobs is to help scientists narrow down the search for dark matter. Last year, researchers noticed that most of the gamma rays coming from the Andromeda galaxy are confined to its center instead of being spread throughout. One possible explanation is that accumulated dark matter at the center of the galaxy is emitting gamma rays!

Fermi has helped us learn a lot about the gamma-ray universe over the last 10 years. Learn more about its accomplishments and the other mysteries it’s working to solve. What other surprises are waiting out among the stars?

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